A gesture sensor is a device that enables the detection of physical movement without the user having to contact the device within which the gesture sensor resides. Detected movements can be used, for example, as input commands for the device. Gesture sensors are commonly used in handheld computing devices, such as tablets and smartphones, and other portable computing devices, such as laptops, as well as in video game consoles.
Some gesture sensors include one or more light emitting elements and one or more light detecting elements. A control circuit can implement an algorithm that uses the positions of the light emitting and/or light detecting elements, as well as the received sensed data, to determine relative movement of a target (e.g., a person's hand or finger moving across the space above the surface of the sensor).